Oregon school shooting: Gunman kills 3 students and teacher before being shot dead by community member

A 16-year-old gunman killed three children and a teacher and wounded two others in a shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday before a community member pursued and killed him, authorities said.

"The deceased at the scene include three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and one teacher," Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz told reporters. Another child and a teacher were injured and taken to a hospital.

The first 911 call came in around 1 p.m. local time (2000 GMT) from a person in a vehicle outside Silver Rail Elementary who reported being shot at by someone carrying a long gun, Krantz said.

Additional 911 calls came from inside the school, police spokesperson Sheila Miller said. Officers arrived within minutes.

"Seconds later, we received word over the radio that the suspect in this incident was down," Miller said.

Students evacuated as police respond to shooting

Bend is a ​city of some ‌100,000 people in central Oregon, about 175 miles (280 kilometers) southeast of Portland.

An updated post later said law enforcement was escorting students by bus to a separate location, where they could reunite with their families. The school serves kindergarten through fifth grade, roughly children aged ⁠5 to ​11. It has about 450 students and 40 staff members, Miller said.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek thanked the community member who "heroically intervened to ​stop further loss of life."

"No parent should have to have this kind of day, and no community should have ​to live through ‌this kind of day. And as we learn more about the children and the adults who have been killed or injured, and their families and their loved ones, we are going to do a lot of crying, and we are going to cry together, and we're probably going to ‌cry privately," Kotek said.

US grapples with recurring mass shootings

The United States, where firearms are widely available, experiences frequent gun violence, with thousands of people killed each year. It has the highest rate of gun-related deaths among high-income countries.

The deadliest school shooting in US history took place at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. South Korean student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others before taking his own life.

There have been more than 365 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter.

Edited by: Sean Sinico